Meet Tim W

05.4.2015 | 11:59 am

I got back from California about one o’clock this morning; I spent last Friday – Sunday in a mountain bike racing paradise.

I do not ask for your pity, but I do ask for your understanding as today I do one very important thing, which I shall conveniently list for you:

1. Introduce you to the winner of the World Bicycle Relief fundraising contest, with the Specialized S-Works bike of your choice, outfitted with ENVE components.

Now that we have a plan, let’s get started, shall we?

Meet Tim W

I got up early on Friday, excited to build the spreadsheet for the drawing. I take this job seriously…and with no small amount of pleasure. I know that a lot of you would participate in these fundraisers even if there weren’t prizes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not fun to give out.

Then, when I got to Boggs forest and met Dave Thompson — my co-ambassador for WBR — I had him use random.org to pick a random number based on the rows in the spreadsheet.

Here’s that moment, captured forever (courtesy of Dave H):

The number? 2940. 

And that number corresponded to Tim W, who has been contributing to fundraisers I’ve been doing for years. Here he is, with his lovely wife Deedee:

I called Tim (many of the entries had corresponding phone numbers) and left a voicemail:

“Hi Tim. This is Fatty. If you like really nice bikes and vacations, you should give me a call back.”

And then I sent him an email saying essentially the same thing.

Then I went racing.

Later that evening, Tim called me. “Is this a prank? Is this real or are you punking me?” he asked.

“It’s real,” I said. “What bike are you going to pick?”

“I don’t know yet,” Tim said. “I need to do some serious thinking.”

However, since Tim does live in Northern California and loves visiting Utah (once, during a vacation they were taking to Zions National Park, Tim and Deedee came and watched The Hammer and me race a couple laps of 24 Hours of Frog Hollow), he does plan to visit Utah. 

So that much is certain. One tough decision down, one extremely tough decision to go!

I asked Tim to send me an email telling me a little bit about himself: 

I could not believe the message that I received Friday night. I returned what I thought was a prank call, to get Fatty on the other end. He informed me of the fantastic luck I had. I was the winner of his latest fundraiser for WBR. My name is Tim. I live in Livermore, CA. and have been following The Fat Cyclist for years as well as participating in his fundraisers, never expecting to win, just knowing they were always for a great cause.

I do not race but ride quite a bit recreationally. The bike will be way beyond my abilities, whatever I get. Now I have some decisions to make.

Thank You Fatty for the entertaining blog posts that you do, keep up the good work, as well as Thanks to WBR, Specialized, ENVE and SRAM. 

I think that’s really well put.

Now, for all of you who are not Tim W, please take a moment to leave a note of congratulations to him, as well as bike / component mix you think he should get (i.e., what you would have gotten).

And don’t worry, folks. You may not have won this time, but the Grand Slam is coming. And the quantity and quality of prizes is going to be outrageous.

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A Post-Contest Note

05.1.2015 | 9:36 am

I don’t have a ton of time to write today; I’m headed out to race Boggs with Jeff D and Levi Leipheimer.

Believe me, there is nothing in the world that makes you quite as self-conscious as grocery shopping with Levi Leipheimer.

Anyway, the contest is over, and I’m working on the spreadsheet right now. You’ll be excited — as I am — to know that we raised $25,168 with this contest!

I’m taking care of making final adjustments to the spreadsheet, and then, as seems only proper, I’ll ask my fellow WBR Ambassador and co-owner of this contest Dave Thompson to pick a random number (using random.org) corresponding to the numbers I’ve assigned everyone in the prize spreadsheet.

And then, this evening, once the day’s racing is done, we’ll send out an email to the winner.

So, start watching your email tonight, OK? 

Of course, I have no idea whether I’ll get Internet, so if you don’t hear from us, that doesn’t mean all is lost.

Let me conclude with a big giant Thank you. Your generosity in this contest will put bikes under 171 students. With an average of three people being affected by each bike, that’s 513 lives you’ve just made better. In a measurable, meaningful, practical way.

So: on behalf of the 513 people who are going to have chances they never would otherwise had, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Once again, I am pretty much overwhelmed by the fact that I have the nicest, most generous friends a person could ever ask to have.

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